BOOJUM!: Oh My Giddy Aunt!

Actually I Don't Have An Aunt
And even if I did, you can bet that she'd be polite and respectable, a lady of distinction, not some batty old chick with a half-empty bottle of gin in her handbag, sitting on a wall at the precinct and shouting at people -
Perhaps that's a little unkind about your aunt. She might not be drunk off her box at ten in the morning, perhaps her career as a boxer has resulted in damage to the inner ear's delicate balancing bones? Or she's just returned from a round-the-world solo yacht voyage and hasn't acclimated to terra firma yet.
I can hear you now - "The sad old duffer's finally lost it, and it was pretty tenuous to begin with-" Yes THANK YOU!
What I would like to point out are some blog traffic stats. Don't cry, this won't be long.

1000 posts!

There you go, 1,000 posts. Er - this is cheating a little, as 6 of those are Drafts that didn't get posted as they were overtaken by a better post. We are, at time of posting, also at 19,996 views, which means that there is an audience for Conrad's scrivelled musings, worrying/reassuring/a bit ambivalent about it as this may be.

Right! Another late night return from The Modern Babylon, so let's crack on apace.

"Z Nation"
All I have to say about Episode 8 is that George RR Martin is a real sport. He played himself, in a way, which is to say, George RRipper Martin the Zombie. Thus:

Image result for z nation george rr martin

George. R-R-R-Romero!

That make-up looks as if it took time to apply. Probably needs removing with a chisel and blowtorch, too.
More reflectively, I see Z Nation's been picked up for a third season, hopefully the last as you can only sustain The Quest trope for so long and to prolong would risk Jumping The Shark. Get The Murphy to California already! Actually they could do that during the third season and we'd follow the survivors as they see a renascent America and try to get back home to the East Coast.
Then again they might not bother. The country, if not the world, seems to be getting along pretty well without any Z-vaccine.
And Citizen Z has been pretty much written off and out, hasn't he?

Citizen Z, communing with his sub-conscious

You What?
I confess that "Church Organ World" doesn't exactly trip off the tongue but for the Foobs this is actually almost relevant, as Conrad does like classical organ music, which he will swear up and down is NOT creepy*.

"Liverpool Lollipops" Obviously the product of a deranged mind.

However, I would like to point out to the Foobs that:
1) I cannot read music, and
2) I do not have access to any kind of organ,let alone a church one
Thus, "Church Organ World" and "Liverpool Lollipops" must remain forever a closed book**.

Skiing
Really? Well, it is one of those rare words in English that have a double "i", which is about Conrad's level of interest in it.

"Eat Sleep Ski".
Two out of three's not bad.

After all, who wants to get i) Cold. Icy cold! ii) Wet iii) Bruised - we are talking about speeds of up to 130 m.p.h. here after all. Not I! Or, if you will, not II.

The B-36 Peacemaker
For those of you constitutionally uninterested in things that go BANG! you may move along to the next article.
Provoked by a sidebar on Facebook, Conrad looked up this American plane.

Looking up at it

This picture doesn't really give you an idea of scale, although it does illustrate the number of engines - six turbine propellors, and four jet engines because, really, six isn't a big enough number. It bristled with sixteen 20 m.m. cannon, which is being greedy, frankly. Allow me to post a scale indicator:

Superfortress to the left, Peacemaker to the right
Puny humans scattered about

It was a beast of a bird, an absolute monster and one of the largest planes ever put into mass production. Constructed to carry 40 tons of payload made up of "Instant Sunshine" bombs, this whopper was used from 1949 until the mid-Fifties.
Allow me to illustrate the payload:

Puny human for scale

This is a Mark 24 Hydrogen Bomb, clocking in at 15 megatonnes yield and 20 tons deadweight. The test shot was hilariously named "Runt", as if there's one thing this terrifying device is not, it's small. They were rushed into production with no safety features - drop one a few feet by accident and it might very well go off. They didn't come with a parachute to slow their descent, so their detonation would have destroyed the parent B36. These features were added later, probably to their crews muted relief.
I should point out that 15 megatonnes is a very big yield indeed, about 100 times the current total of an average American warhead, so perhaps the bomber would be better called "Piece-maker".

The Banana-Flavoured Twinky: A Beast Not To Be Taken Lightly
Or, in the case of Rachel, not at all. Rachel is a new arrival sitting on our bank of desks, currently suffering from a bad cold. This causes her to cough loudly and frequently, to the frowning displeasure of Conrad, who continually barks "Shut Up!" at her.
That is, until mid-afternoon, when his metabolism slows down to that of a sedated koala immersed in treacle, which is when he needs loud coughs to keep him awake.

Aware that he'd been a churl, Conrad offered her some banana Twinky, which she took with delight, chewed with surprise and spat out with alarm.
"Too banana-y" was her verdict.
Oh well. Can't win them all.

And Now, A Persimmon
Because this is the most favourite of all Conrad's favourite things, and neither Tom (secret Twinky fiend himself) and Rachel (who might like the normal Twinky) knew what it was: